KOTA KINABALU: The allegation made by a former Penampang parliamentary candidate that the state government’s decision to issue a special pass to foreigners has made the KadazanDusun community uneasy, was not true.
A party official said the STAR candidate, Cleftus Mojingol, was unable to differentiate between the issuance of a special work pass and granting citizenship.
Christopher Toguk Masudal, Special Officer to the Member of Parliament for Penampang, Darell Leiking, pointed out it was puzzling that Cleftus claimed he represented the KadazanDusun in Penampang when he lost his deposit at the last general elections.
“He can’t even see that the proposal to issue the special pass is meant to regulate all foreigners in Sabah, whether legal or illegally. Perhaps his inability to understand issues is the reason why he was rejected by Penampang voters and fared badly during GE14,” he said.
“Regularisation of foreign workers in Sabah including those illegal ones had been done previously. Including during the tenure of Tan Sri Chong Kah Kiat as Chief Minister If Cleftus wants to make noise about this practice of regularisation, then he should first get all his facts right from the former CM before making wild allegations against Darell.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t have the initiative or he might just be plain lazy to make a thorough investigation on this matter, hence, he decided to argue on a racial context by throwing in the ‘KadazanDusun’ since that would be the easiest thing to say,” he added.
“So, I guess it was apt for the Penampang folks to reject him during the previous election because he lack the capability to see issues clearly in order for a proper Governance to take place,” he said in a statement today.
Masudal also said it that the issuance of the special pass may very well be the answer on the existent of some 800,000 PTIs in Sabah.
“Regularisation has nothing to do with the issuance of citizenship; no developed country in the World would be crazy enough to welcome the influx of illegal immigrants to their place that would cause great demographic and socio-economic changes,” he said.
“With the issuance of the special pass, we just might be able to get the 800,000 PTIs hiding all over Sabah come out and then to prevent them from getting citizenship thru the help of syndicates because they are now being recorded as foreign workers.”
We also need to enhance our Sabahans so that they will get the best jobs as we rebuilt the economy and fegulating these iilegal workers will give us the necessary datas and resolve the long outstanding issue of who and who are in Sabah illegally created by the previous Government.
He advised Cleftus to procure a copy of the ‘Lest We Forget’ written by Dr Chong Eng Leong and identify who were the “Sabahans” involved in giving citizenships to the illegal immigrants in Sabah.
“From the perusal of the said book we have noted that a direct allegation had been made more of STAR’s current political Partner, Musa Aman as ‘alleged’ in the book” he concluded.-pr/BNN
